Enemies of All Mankind
by OverMaster
Summary: Wanted, dead or alive! Short stories, discarded ficlets, assorted random stuff written around characters reputed to have Unwanted or Wanted harems, whether from canon or fanon. Generally related to Unequally Rational and Emotional and its spinoffs in one way or another. Shipping will abound.
1. Chapter 1

Akamatsu Ken and Kodansha created and own _Mahou Sensei Negima!_

 _Winnie-the-Pooh_ was created by A.A. Milne and belongs to The Walt Disney Company... or Stephen Slesinger Inc... or the Milne estate... or... you know, whatever. They always can fight each other over who can sue me.

I make no money at all from this.

Thanks to Shadow Crystal Mage for proofreading and adding some jokes.

* * *

 **A British Affair of Sorts**.

A special chapter for _The Keys of the Kingdom_.

* * *

"Oh, so you found the torn page after all!" Merlin happily said as Negi nodded, showing the old, yellowed sheet of paper he'd just brought into the ancient mage's shack. Archimedes simply huffed dismissively from his perch, ruffling his feathers and turning around to face the other way instead. Next to him, Fou snoozed."It wasn't too much of a hassle, I trust."

"Not at all," Negi said, "thanks to Yue's help," As the short librarian standing shortly behind him with the knowingly smirking Asuna blushed faintly and looked aside, the boy blinked as he was handed the rest of the old tome. "Sir? Why are you giving it to me?"

"Well, you recovered the page," Merlin explained, sitting back to stroke his long white beard, "so it's just fitting you should return it to the book, don't you think so?"

"Ah, of course, if you say so, Sir, that's a honor, then..." Negi nodded, flipping the volume open and quickly reaching the marked spot from where the missing page had been taken. Carefully, he placed the page back on its proper place, whispered a restoration spell under his breath...

And then a bright flash came out of the book, enveloped Negi and the two girls, and pulled them inside of the book, warping them away from that plane of reality.

"Really," Archimedes muttered grumpily while Merlin calmly picked the book up, "children just never should be entrusted to you..."

The mage frowned indignantly, adjusting his glasses and starting his re-read from Page One, as one should. "My, what a rude thing to say! I'm just giving them a whimsical breather fitting people their age, after all. That boy really needs it, if you ask me. That or get laid. He's much too old to still be a virgin"

"I'm sure Wart would have appreciated it, had you done the same for her," Archimedes kept on muttering.

"We had lots of whimsical harmless fun together too, it's just she was almost killed in each case!" Merlin argued, crossing his scrawny legs and better settling himself on the old couch. "No helping it, to deal in magic is to walk with death after all. But Negi already has enough of that on a daily basis as it is. Scary thing, realizing she was far better adjusted when she was his age. Makes one worry about his future..."

Not worried enough as to stop himself from enjoying his reading, however.

* * *

"Okay," Asuna sighed, placing two fingers to her forehead and rubbing the incoming headache. "So, where are we now?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Yue asked. "The book is A.A. Milne's _Winnie-the-Pooh_ , so we must be inside of that book now."

"— since when was reaching that kind of conclusion count as 'obvious'?" Asuna asked.

Baka Black gave Baka Red a glare. "Asuna-san, you've been at this much longer than I have. Why do you still feel compelled to ask such things?"

"Well, Chisame's not here, so I got tagged. I mean, it's 'obvious' in the weird kind of 'logic' that applies to us," Asuna reasoned, "but you can't say it's 'obvious' as in 'obvious-obvious', which I thought still applied to you, Leader Black. Sorry to have reached a wrong conclusion, then!"

"That," Negi observed, impressed, "was a very Chisame thing to say, Asuna-san."

"Gee, thanks. Coming from you, I'll take it as a compliment," Asuna nodded.

"Why would you think it wasn't?" Negi said.

"Well, most people would think it means I'm annoying and have pimples."

"Oh, come now, you know that pimple thing is mostly in her head. I told her she should get a cleaner mirror and wipe the lens of her digital camera with a cleaner cloth."

"Mostly," Yue said, pointing at the grass where someone seemed to have written '100 ACRE WOODS' with thick black marker right before them, spanning almost half a block of fertile ground, "even leaving the 'Ala Alba-esque' sense of twisted logical clues like the flash of light and the smirk on Merlin-sensei's face, there's that, which is a landmark of Children's Literature come to life if I've ever seen one. And remember, I belong to that Club!"

 _This could be the homeland of any small boy, but it just happens to be home to a boy named Negi Springfield_ , a warm, grandfatherly voice of unknown origins began narrating from above them. _Like most small boys, Negi Springfield had toy animals to play with, and they all lived together in a wonderful world of make-believe_.

"Now, that narration doesn't belong in Milne's prose," Yue made a small frown. "It might be the storytelling is adapting itself to assimilate Negi-sensei as its protagonist, which I'm sure the real Christopher Robin Milne would have appreciated, but..."

"Now that he mentions it," Negi calmly said, looking at the idyllic wilderness spreading before them under a clear blue sky, "this does remind me a lot of some woods Anya and I used to play in during our childhood. I never played with toy animals, however. Somehow, I could never see the point..."

"Well, yeah, but then, you always were weird," Asuna shrugged, deciding the environment didn't look dangerous enough just yet. "They told me all about those visits to your flashbacks, you know. What kind of brat decides to become a supervillain when he's still six?"

 _In the lower right portion of the screen, Lex Luthor raised an eyebrow. "What? I am not a supervillain, I am the only man who can see the ALIEN MENACE for what it really is!"_

"A what?" Yue asked as Negi coughed uncomfortably, and the Narrator chose to take pity on him by continuing, distracting Yue's attentions.

 _But his best friend was a bear called Winnie-the-Pooh — or, 'Pooh' for short. Now, Pooh had some very unusual adventures, and they all happened right here in the Hundred Acre Woods_.

As they walked, exploring the area and looking for the next door to open or Princess to kiss so they could leave already (and it was disturbing in itself how that, too, seemed to be becoming routine), they saw a small yellow bear that seemed to be made of cloth, sitting on a tree stump and tapping himself on the head, making a great effort to remember or formulate something.

"Think, think. Think, think," the red-shirt-wearing bear repeated, still not noticing the presence of Negi and his companions. "Think, think." Steam was clearly emanating from his head, as if he were badly overheating something.

"..." Yue said. "A shirt? That's such a corruption of Ernest E. Shepard's perfect, lovely illustrations. The Heartless must have done a real job on this world."

"Heh. I think I like him, he reminds me of Maki-chan's mind in Satsuki's body," Asuna smiled before walking to the bear and casually greeting him, "Yo! What's wrong there, Pookie?"

"Pookie?" the bear blinked, slowly lowering a fingerless paw and tilting his head aside curiously. "I have no pookies, but if you had any cookies with honey, I'd be glad to take one or two or three..."

"Cookies? No biscuits?" Negi said, faintly dismayed.

"See, Sensei?" Yue told him. "This is nothing but a twisted mockery of all that is good and decent in Early 20th Century's Children's Lit."

"M-Maybe," Negi hesitated, "but even so... Ahem," he bowed for the small yellow creature. "Glad to meet you, I'm Professor Negi Springfield, and these are my students, Kagurazaka Asuna and Ayase Yue. May we help you in any way, sir?"

"Professor?" the bear very slowly blinked, and Asuna already was starting to change her mind on him. Not even Makie was THAT slow. Sure, she always reached the wrong conclusions, but she at least was quick to get there. "Kagura— Oh, no, no, you can't help me, you've made it harder instead," he lamented, going back to tapping his head. "Those are very big, strange words I don't know, and I already was having trouble thinking with the ones I know..."

"Well, and what words were those?" Negi asked, with the saintly smile of any teacher used to dealing with 'special' children (we're required by law to call them that, otherwise we'd use a word one letter shorter). "We could start from there, you know..."

"No, I don't know," the pudgy bear said, "because I forgot them! That's why I must think of them, except I can't, because I already forgot them, so I must—"

"Then they aren't the words you know either, are they?" Asuna asked. "Looking at it from that angle, maybe you should start thinking of 'Kagurazaka' instead. It may sound hard to you, but at least you haven't forgotten it yet, right?"

"Actually, I think I have," the bear said. "Kah-gooh—"

As Asuna facepalmed and resolved to never complain about Haruka's way with words again, a small pig hanging from a red balloon's thread passed by flying over them, as pigs tend to usually do. "Oh, hello, Piglet!" the bear happily waved up at the terrified tiny creature clinging for dear life. "Ah, that's right, I was thinking of that balloon! But, why was I—?"

"Pooh!" the piglet named Piglet wailed. "I told you to go look for heeeeelp!"

"Ah, that's right, that's why I was thinking of balloons!" Pooh nodded. "Thank you, Piglet, you've been a great help today..."

"P-POOOOHHHHHH!"

Negi sighed, pointed up with a finger, and said, _"Ras tel Ma Scir Magister, Sagitta Magica."_

A single, tiny arrow of compressed wind flew from his finger, pierced the balloon, and dropped the yelping Piglet, who was easily caught in the hands of the waiting Asuna below. "Th-Th-Thank you!" the little pig stuttered, giving the author a wasted opening for some sort of Porky joke.

"Well," Yue said, "at least this one sticks to the book's visuals better. Although his body should be blue..."

"Oh! The balloon!" a slooooowly shocked Pooh said, clumsily waddling his way to the remains of said flotation device on the ground. "You've popped the balloon..."

"Sorry our heartless supervillain friend popped your balloon, Bear-san," Asuna bowed. "We'll punish his wrongdoing as harshly as we can."

"I'm not a supervillain anymore, and why can't you use that kind of language for anything but teasing those who can't?!" Negi protested.

Pooh seemed to almost sob, just as slooooowly. "We, we needed the balloon to go visit the bees and take some hunny from them..." he said, pointing up at the large beehive on the branches of a big tree across the clearing. He smiled sadly. "But that's okay, I guess. We'll think of some other way."

 _In WHICH century?!_ Negi, Asuna and Yue thought all at once, but just nodded their silent agreement instead.

"By the way, I'm Winnie the Pooh, Pooh for short, and this is Piglet," he said. "Are you here to say goodbye?"

"Um, well, as a matter of fact, we were just passing by, so you could say..." Asuna began.

Negi discreetly silenced her with a gesture, then kindly asked Pooh, "Saying goodbye? Why, if we've just arrived?"

"Negiiiiiiiii," Asuna complained.

"Well," Pooh awkwardly scratched the back of his head, "looks like everyone's saying goodbye now. We'd take walks together, or play baseball with our unbeatable God. And everyday, I'd eat some hunny from Rabbit!"

"Honey from a rabbit?" Asuna asked, confused, and thus wasting the opportunity for a Bugs Bunny joke.

"Haven't you ever even watched a Pooh cartoon, Asuna-san?" the annoyed Yue asked her.

"I never watch gaijin anime, I only buy the merchandise!" the redhead said, then snapped her fingers and told the confused Piglet, "I think I have you on a T-shirt!"

"That couldn't be, since he's here, I think," Pooh pondered, scratching his own head. "But he and I are the only ones who are here, since everyone's leaving. After the nights became longer and darker, and the days shorter and, well, darker too, which I guess makes no much sense since if those are longer and these are shorter, shouldn't those be darker and these brighter? But anyway, now they can't give me hunny," this was ruefully said with a sad rubbing of his growling belly, "because they're gone."

"Rabbit, Owl, Eeyore, Kanga and Roo all moved away," Piglet sadly said, "and our unbeatable baseball God, too. I think it had something to do with some—"

"Professor!" Pooh suddenly said, as if finally enlightened by a great spark. "Professor, that's something that has something else to do with something called a school, isn't it?"

"Um, yes, it is," Negi confirmed. "Your, ah, unbeatable baseball God must have gone to school, like all children eventually have to. Although this being a British story, it should be football instead, or at least cricket..."

"Will the bastardizations never cease?" the upset Yue muttered. "They should just burn this book already!"

"Yue," Negi chided, "no advocating for the destruction of perfectly innocent people's homes, much less while we're in them, okay?"

She pouted. "I'm sorry, Sensei, but my blood boils at this profanation of a classic..."

"Yoo-hooo!" a feisty voice called out. "Now, not everyone's left! You're forgetting someone!"

Without even blinking, and barely shifting on his feet, Negi instinctively swatted away the colorful blur leaping from the bushes at him with a mighty roar and outstretched paws. It was only a second after he realized he'd just hit nothing but a plush tiger barely any bigger than Pooh, and he'd just sent him flying to bounce between trees like a rubber ball while Asuna and Yue sweatdropped. "GAH! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you, but I've been trained, and whenever someone pounces on me, my first instinct is to—!"

"You and Evangeline have a lot to answer for," Yue told Asuna as the dazed, groggy tiger dragged himself across the grass to finally drop at Negi's feet with a dumb chuckle.

Asuna coughed into a fist, then formally told the animals, "Once again, we apologize for the evil of our supervillain friend."

"I just told you I didn't mean to!" Negi cried.

"Of, of course he didn't, 'cause otherwise I wouldn't have let him !" the tiger slicked his fake head fur, or at least the plush surface on his scalp, back as he stood on his tail, making a slight bouncing sound while he did so. "Tiggers are the best at not letting others do what we don't want us to get done to! Hello, I'm Tigger! T-I-Double Grr-Err! That spells Tigger!" he introduced himself, very proudly.

"Why hello Tigger," Pooh waved. "This is the Professor, and this is Ka-gooh-ra-zoo-ka, and this one's related to Owl, I think..."

"I'm an owl?" Yue asked, right eyebrow twitching slightly.

"Actually, I think it kinda fits, yeah," Asuna nodded, imagining an owl's outline over the small, compact figure of the taciturn girl.

Tigger wagged his thick eyelashes, edging closer to Asuna and wrapping his tail around her legs, much to her annoyance, while Yue made a tiny smirk of bemusement. "Hoo-hoo, pleased to meetcha, Kanga-rooh-zooka! And you're related to Kanga, I see," Here he slightly blushed and broke into short goofy chuckling before eagerly asking, "What were you doing here, with Ol' Pooh and Mr. Piggy-Wiggy?"

"And Mr. Balloon," Pooh said, sadly holding Mr. Balloon's mortal remains.

Tigger gasped in horror. "Who?! Who did such a malified thing?!"

"A supervillain," Negi sighed in resignation. "We, we were about to help Mr. Pooh get his hunny..."

At the reminder of that word, Pooh's stomach growled even harder now, and after a moment of doubt he unceremoniously threw Mr. Balloon's corpse aside. "I think," he said, "my rumbly tumbly would thank that."

"I see!" there was a glint in Tigger's eyes as he rubbed his chin, looking up at the beehive in analytical fashion. "Well, this demands a brave and bold strike plan! To steal, I mean, take the hunny, which is all icky but Ol' Pooh still likes anyway, we must be very ingenifirious and bravusculous! We'll draw a complex, expert plan to get pass the missus bees and get our hands on the icky sticky stuff! We'll... JUMP UP THERE AND TAKE IT!"

 _"Ras tel Ma Scir Magister. Aer et aqua, facti nebula illis somnum brevem. Nebula Hypnotica,"_ Negi droned, casting a sleep-inducing mist that made the bees buzzing around the hive quickly fly down in spirals to end up sleeping on the grass. As the three animals blinked, he floated up, reached inside of the hive, quickly gathered some honey into his hands, and floated back down, offering the scoops of his raid for an eager Pooh to desperately slurp and swallow like a shameless addict. Seriously, it was disgusting, he was snorting it up his nose so it would go down when his mouth was full.

Tigger looked away in disgust, sticking his tongue out. "Or you could be a weird bore and just do that, instead. Bah! Bah! Phooey! Hunny's horrible after all!"

A thoughtful Yue stuck a finger in the honey and delicately licked it. "We should have brought some bread and a butter knife..."

Asuna simply shook her head in disapproving dismay. "And now you're stealing from poor, hard working creatures of God who need that to feed their bee babies. Your supervillainy knows no limits, doesn't it?"

"It's for a good cause!" Negi protested, trying to wipe his hands off on his sides, only to have Pooh hungrily slurp all over them instead. "Ah, well, thanks. Now, if there's nothing else you need from us..."

"How 'bout a bouncing contest, Flying Boy?" Tigger proposed, stomping up to Negi with a challenging smile.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Tigger, but I'm afraid I can't bounce..."

"Well, and I can't fly, so I'd say that makes us even," Tigger replied. "Except 'cause bouncing is better, so I win! 'Cause bouncing is what Tiggers do best, and there's nothing better than what Tiggers go better than anyone else!"

Piglet nodded, taking a wary look at poor Mr. Balloon. "Flying is scary, y-yes. Bouncing is not that scary, I think..."

"Seriously? Then let's go for a few bounces!" Tigger suggested.

"N-N-NO!"

Negi laughed softly. "Ah, you're all so funny. It's actually a shame we can't stay, but... we've got to get back to our friends, at home."

Pooh nodded, sloooooowly offering him a paw that Negi shook cordially. "We're your friends too, Professor. We won't forget you!"

"Promise?" Yue deadpanned before Asuna discreetly gave her a smack on the noggin from behind. "I mean, we won't forget what you did to, I mean for, classical British Literature either, Pooh-san."

"Who is Pooh-san?" Pooh asked. "Somehow, that almost sounds familiar..."

"Must be your brother or something," Tigger brushed it off, walking back to Asuna, wiggling his eyebrows again, and placing a clumsy wet smack on her hand. "I hope we'll meet again soon, Miss Kangaroo-zooka. Cute bells, very cute, by the way..."

"Ah-ha-ha, well, yeah, thanks..." Asuna laughed while Yue smirked at her again. "Don't you worry about your old friends either! I promise they'll get back as soon as we defeat the Heartless!"

"The what?" Piglet asked.

"I'm not sure they're related to this particular little crisis, Asuna-san," Yue cautioned, "I'd say it's rather like the physical manifestation of a childlike sense of wonder and imagination vanishing gradually after his exposure to—"

"No matter what, we'll beat them!" Asuna swore, pumping a fist up as the three of them disappeared little by little, bathed by a golden light. "Because we have a bigger, badder, even more vile villain than they do! We have Negi!"

"I'M NOT A SUPERVILLAIN!"

"Yeah, tell that to the bees!" Asuna countered, and then they were gone.

Tigger, Pooh and Piglet sat there, on the grass, looking at the place where they had been moments ago, and finally, Pooh said, slowly, "Want to go look for some snacks now?"

 _Negi waved good-bye, and so did they. And maybe they would never meet again. But, wherever Negi would go, and whatever happened to them on his way, he would always know, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest, a little bear would always be waiting for him_.

* * *

"Oh, come on now," Asuna said as Negi wiped something off a corner of his eye, "We weren't there for even half a hour! Don't start acting as if we developed life changing ties with them! We're not Kirk Taichou-sama, we're not that good! I bet they'll forget us before their day is over!"

"Chalk it up to poetic license if you want, Princess," Merlin shrugged, closing the book. "But I know you're more of a dreaming romantic than that."

"There you go calling me 'Princess' again, just like the old demon..." Asuna muttered, looking aside. "No wonder Saber-san can't stand you..."

"I still say that was an abomination going against all there that is good and decent in the original books," Yue said, with the quiet bristling aura of a RUINED FOREVER Internet fangirl critic.

"Eh, you should see what they did to _The Once and Future King_ , and yet I'm not complaining!" Merlin observed. "Now, do you want to hear another story before going back home...?"

* * *

Piglet waved to the readers. "Th-Th-Th-Th-That's all, folks! "

Oh look, we managed a Porky Pig joke after all.

* * *

 **The End**.

 **…**

 **Or Is It?**

* * *

As they left the house, leaving the book all alone except for a sleeping Fou, there was a brief light. The book glowed.

Then from out of the book popped a little wide-eyed loli girl in a black dress. "Wah! Who keeps doing this? Alice keeps taking out the bad part, who keeps putting it back in?"

And so Nursery Rhyme reached into the book and pulled out several pages of an abomination, a twisted mockery that went against all that was good and decent about Early 20th Century's Children's Literature. Satisfied, she went off looking for candy, or possibly a tea party.


	2. Chapter 2

_Alice in Wonderland_ belongs to the public domain by now, but The Walt Disney Company created the take on the story seen here.

Kodansha and Akamatsu Ken created and own _Mahou Sensei Negima!_ even if all they do with it now is screwing it up.

I make no money from this fanfic.

* * *

 **It's a Wonderland Wherever You Go**.

A pseudo-sequel in dubious continuity to _The Keys of the Kingdom_.

Edits and extra gags provided by Shadow Crystal Mage.

* * *

"Good morning, everyone," a still sort of sleepy Negi said, walking into the dinning room while finishing buttoning his shirt up. "I had the strangest dream ever last night, you know. Actually, it's more like they were two different dreams, and each one contradicted the other's events, yet they seemed to happen in parallel. It's very strange, I don't know how to best describe it..."

The only ones sitting at the table, over a few plates of pancakes in the Western style Evangeline favored, were Alice, Cocone, Madoka, Lala and Rito. The first three at opposite sides of the table, Madoka and Cocone sharing one, Alice alone at the other, and they'd been comparing Pactio cards when Negi had walked in. Rito sat slightly perplexed for some reason a few seats away from them, while Lala sat by his side happily eating like a Saiyan, without any concern in the world.

Negi blinked, looked all over them, and finally said, "There's something strange here..."

"We were the first ones to get up this morning, that's all," Cocone quietly said.

"Oh," Negi said, nodding, and then calmly pulled his chair and sat down. "Well, I guess they won't mind if we start without them. It's my turn to do the dishes this morning, right?"

"Riiiiiight," Rito said, slowly deciding Negi-sensei had the right idea after all in just going with the flow, for their own sanity's sake.

* * *

"The skirt is far too short! It's just plain indecent!" Alice gasped, insisting on trying to tug it down so it covered more of her mostly exposed legs, but since it wouldn't go that far without sliding down her hips, it was ultimately an exercise in futility. She quickly realized this and simply pouted, looking clearly unhappy about it all. "I had no idea Japanese customs were this dissolute. In the books, all Japanese women wear kimonos that cover pretty much the whole of their bodies…"

"Stop complaining, it looks cute on you," Misa complimented, ruffling the cloth with the black and red checkered patterns back into proper place, then taking a moment to briefly pat both hands on Alice's hips. "You'll get used to it in no time, I'm sure!"

"But, but, what if there's a strong wind?" Alice doubted, uncomfortably taking her hands to the back of her skirt, flinching at how tight and skimpy her new undergarments felt, allowing chilly drafts to sneak under that treacherously short skirt. "Then everyone will see, well, the unmentionables!" she blushed brightly, avoiding Misa's amused smirk. "Don't laugh, please, this is extremely serious!"

"What a cutie, so shy!" Misa fondly said, reaching over to ruffle her fingers through her blond hair. "Even though you're a rival in love, I can't get mad at you! Relax, you'll spend most of your time around other girls, so even if they get a look, what's the problem?"

Shiina the lesbian and Kugimiya the grudging member of the SOS Brigade (aka, the complete and total weirdoes) exchanged flat looks at this statement.

"W-Well..." Alice kept on looking aside, "then there is that, I suppose, but even so…"

Sitting on the edge of Madoka's bunk, Kugimiya and Shiina watched on with mild interest. They were too entertained to tell Alice about bicycle shorts under the skirt yet, or even those hideous cheap shorts Misaka Mikoto-sempai, the freelance enforcer for the Discipline Committee, used to wear. They also found Misa's 'more gay than normal' behavior mildly entertaining. She didn't seem to notice she was being more touchy-feely than normal. "Yeah, you look great, Alice-chan," Sakurako eventually nodded, smirking impishly. "You'll get yourself a fanclub before the week's over, I can tell!"

"F-Fanclub?" Alice stammered dubiously.

"Yeah, well, foreign students and teachers always get a lot of attention," Misa nodded, adjusting Alice's tie carefully, and not tying it as tightly as she'd have done to any other rivals, then smoothing down Alice's lapels and lingering longer on her chest than was necessary. "I can't guarantee that'll last, though, so enjoy it while you can!"

"Oh, I honestly don't know if I could enjoy having a lot of attention heaped upon me," Alice said, as Misa combed her hair one last time before they left. "After all, last time it happened because I was in the middle of a trial and waiting for a death sentence."

Misa sighed. "Well," she said, putting an arm around Alice's shoulders. "I'll be honest with you. Navigating through the social scene of an academy… pretty much amounts to the same thing as that."

* * *

"So, who are you rooming with?" Yuuki Mikan asked her newest classmate over lunch. The rest of her friends had sent her as a test balloon of shorts while they hung behind, discreetly watching their conversation and taking note of what was going on for future reference. Mikan thought it was a stupid thing to do, but she knew she wasn't going to change their minds on the subject, so she was a good Japanese girl and avoided confrontation by going with what the group expected from her. Besides, the new girl seemed likable. Mikan had no idea why her classmates were so wary of approaching foreigners, even Lala-san was fairly agreeable.

"Um, with three upperclasswomen from Class 3-A," Alice said, and further into the background, Mikan's friends could be faintly gasping in shock and alarm. "Miss Kugimiya, Miss Kakizaki and Miss Shiina…"

Here, the gasps grew in intensity and urgency, and one of the girls was briefly heard whimpering, "Th-The scout of the SOS Brigade! This is an omen of doom…!"

Mikan sweatdropped and smiled, forcing her own tone up to try and disguise her friends' voices. "I see, they are in the same club as my brother's girlfriend... Um, I assume, then, you are…"

Alice nodded, with a faint blush and her hands on her knees. "Y-Yes, I am the newest member inducted into the English Research Society… Professor Springfield has been a great help in making me feel like at home…"

The voices grew in pitch and agitation.

"I knew it! She's one of his girlfriends!"

"Oooohhhh! Maybe, maybe if we become her friends, she'll get us a spot too!"

"Quick, before Mikan gets the lead! You know boys will always go for her first!"

"Q-Quiet down! Look, she's about to—"

Mikan came back from quelling the chattering voices, cheeks slightly flushed. She dusted her hands off on her hips, sat down with Alice again, and made her best attempt to smile sincerely. "I'm sorry about that," she offered. "Now, I trust Haruna-san hasn't been bothering you? She's a good girl, but she's also a bit… eccentric, but then again, English people like eccentricities, don't you?"

Alice blinked, craned her neck up to look past Mikan's shoulder, and very honestly replied, "I've seen worse than Miss Saotome, if that's what you mean."

"Dammit," one of the girls said groggily. "I'd forgotten she packed that kind of right hook."

* * *

"Soooo..." Mikan said as they both sat together on the porch of the Yuuki household, eating Popsicles, "You're a princess, then? I'm so honored! I mean, getting to know TWO princesses in less than a year, when I never dreamed of ever meeting a single one!"

"Well," Alice said, "it's not that I am a Princess as such, since my family has no royal blood. But apparently some council of superior entities somewhere decided I was one of twelve or so so-called Princesses of Heart, who are necessary to keep the balance between light and darkness. Or something along those lines. I don't understand it too well myself."

"Um," Mikan said. "And where are all those other Princesses, then?"

Alice only could shrug. "I have no idea, the Professor had to abandon that quest after the whole chain of events seemingly collapsed in on itself and we were pulled into this world. Or at least that was how Doctor Hakase explained it to me."

"... okay," Mikan said, deciding trying her best to take all of that in stride. "I guess it wasn't too important, since that search could be dropped aside without all of reality blinking awa—"

There she stopped herself, looked around very nervously, and trembled. "I was one letter away from destroying reality! Scary!"

Alice blinked. "Ah. By the way, I heard you liked gardening, Mr. Yuuki?" she asked Rito as he walked out bringing their glasses of orange juice. "Here's something I'd like to give you as a token of my gratitude. It may not be much, but... it's a seed I picked up while in Wonderland, and I figured it might make a fine addition to this beautiful garden of yours..."

The boy blinked, looking at the small green seed Alice had just handed him after pulling it from her skirt pocket. "Seriously? Oh, thank you very much, Alice-chan. Um, I've always liked exotic plants, yes..."

"Why don't you go bring the special watering can Lala gave you?" Mikan smiled. "Alice-chan, you should see it! When he waters plants with it, they grow thrice as big and healthy! It's like a miracle, it's incredible!"

Now, Alice had seen more than her fair share of incredible miracles of late, and in all honesty, she was not sure she was ready for, or even wanted to, witness any more. Still, it would have been so impolite not to share in Miss Mikan's enthusiasm! "Oh, well, I'd love to see it, in that case!" she made herself smile, bringing her hands together.

Rito smiled as well, looking at the shiny seed in his hand. By now he knew better than to trust strange gifts from alien worlds, but this was A PLANT! His gardening spirits couldn't resist to the promises of seeing A NEW TYPE OF PLANT!

"Let's do it!" he cheered, pumping a fist up...

* * *

"Uwah!" Rito cried as he was held upside down by the long, thick root grabbing him by a leg, high over the garden. His Artifact was still firmly clutched in hand, not that further watering the gigantic, monstrous flower with the tentacle-like roots spawning from his fertile grounds would have helped any. "LALA! Do something!"

"Will do, of course!" Lala, standing by a shocked Mikan, mortified and appalled Alice, and scowling, glowering Nao at the house's door, was dialing a long number on her Devilukian cellphone, eyes gleaming, watering grin wide. "The Galactic Botanic Research must be contacted on this fantastic discovery immediately! Oh, and Momo will want video of it, naturally!"

"THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT AT ALL! LALA!" he cried while the plant shook him around experimentally.

"... she needs a name. How 'bout 'Celine'?" Nao dryly offered after a long, thoughtful consideration. "Because she looks like a Celine to me..."

"I think it might be an Audrey," Mikan said.

* * *

"Rito, there's a weird old guy looking for you," Nao said, walking into his bedroom without even knocking first. In her defense, he had his door wide open, since he hadn't met Momo yet. "He's got creepy eyes and a pervy face."

"Tell him Dad won the lawsuit, he doesn't have to make his manga any less lewd, and if there's another trial, they can find him at his studio," Rito said, without looking up from his homework. "If it's about Celine, tell him—"

"I have come for you, not your father or any 'Celine', Keyblade wielder," Yen Sid grimly announced, appearing on the doorstep right behind Nao, Keyblade well in hand.

"GAHHHHH, IT'S YOU!" Rito screamed, quickly backpedalling against the wall. "How, how did you even find me?!"

"Magic," Yen Sid said. "And Facebook."

"Okay, I'm leaving you guys alone, have fun," Nao flatly said before walking away, texting on her cellphone all the way down the hall. "Just make sure it's safe and consensual."

The old mage smiled, which with his pervy face was really disturbing. "Distance is nothing for the searchers of the Light. You cannot escape your responsibility!" he vigorously shouted, shoving the Keyblade into the boys' hands. "Even now, dark forces out there scheme to subjugate the worlds! You cannot simply pretend to abandon your duties, as if they were a game!"

Rito handed him a list.

"What's this?" Yen Sid frowned, reading from the names written on it. "Takamichi T. Takahata, Akashi Wataru, Negi Springfield, Ku Fei, Misaka Mikoto, Kotegawa Yui, Suzushiro Haruka, Sakurazaki Setsuna, Shirai Kuroko, Kuchiki Rukia, Bujushima Saeko, Akemi Homura, Chicken Boo? What is the meaning of this?"

"It's my list of people on this campus I'd trust with a fated weapon in a fight to save the universe, Sir," Rito gulped. "You'll notice I'm not there, and that's because, well—"

"Nonsense, the Keyblade chose you! It wants you to use it, you are not that easily replaceable!" Yen Sid insisted, in utter defiance of everything past Kingdom Hearts 1. "You are not going to flee your training!"

"But, they're all responsible, and good fighters, dutiful, not flimsy or indecisive at all, well, Negi-sensei is, but only in romantic matters, but he's only ten, and it's not like that matters anyway in a—"

Yen Sid huffed, beginning to pull large bags of heavy luggage out of his wide sleeves, where they shouldn't have fit at all no matter how spacious they were. As he placed them on the floor, one after another, he humorlessly told Rito, "Show me your guest room. This place is nowhere as fit for a knight's training as my tower, but we will cope, I am sure."

"HAVEN'T YOU HEARD A SINGLE WORD OF WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING?!"

"Where are your parents?" Yen Sid asked. "The terms of my stay will have to be discussed with them."

"Um, I don't know. They're at their jobs, I guess."

"Well, when will they come back?"

"I don't know either."

"They are coming back today, aren't they?"

"Um, unless you pull them here with your magic, no, they won't, and I'm sure even then they'll just call a taxi and leave immediately."

"I see. But they'll be back by the weekend?"

"I think they don't know the meaning of that word."

"Which one?"

"'Weekend' or 'back'. Either works. Maybe they'll drop by Christmas. Dad might visit for my birthday, but that's in October, and I make no promises."

"…" Yen Sid said.

"Are you disappointed?" Rito asked.

"Hardly. Where I come it's expected for parents to be absent for most children. It's good to know a few traditions are the same everywhere."

"Are you sure you're from the forces of good?! What sad place are you from that it's expected for kids not to have parents to take care of them?"

"Our founder and king had mother issues. Your parents' lack of meddling will make things all that much easier," a pleased Yen Sid nodded. Then he paused, stroke his beard thoughtfully, and shifted his eyes around. "Is Professor Mikado here?"

"She lives a few blocks away, in the big spooky mansion," Rito deadpaanned.

"I see. The one I saw in my way here, I assume. A fine home for a fine woman. It was just natural, indeed…"

"Um, okay, if there's no way out of this, you can go tell her hi while I put your things in your room," Rito said with weary resignation. "I'm sure she won't mind…"

Yen Sid was already gone.

"At least I won't have to live with those perverted twins anymore," Rito sighed very deeply, and began to lift one of the bags. "What the hell, why are they so heavy?! Brooms?! Why are there so many BROOMS in this one?!"

* * *

From here to there, then back to here, and then back again! It looked like the last few days in Alice's life had been nothing but that, and worse, it also looked like they'd keep on being that way. Now, Professor Negi had called her and the cheerleader trio and summoned them to the Yuuki's residence, where besides Negi himself, Chamo the ermine, Princess Lala, Mr. Yuuki and his sister (apparently their cousin the harlot was out on some sort of excursion, thankfully. Alice had not liked her very much, and she could tell the feeling was mutual), there had been a very stern looking old gentleman with the long white beard, tall pointy hat and long robes befitting a wizard from a fantasy book, waiting for her.

"So," Mikan told Negi while Yen Sid carefully studied Alice, looking under her eyes, feeling her pulse, passing a few small tablets over her head and other assorted actions one would expect from a magical medical test, "you're a mage, then."

"Yes, I am," Negi had to confess, since there was no point in denying it to her at this point either. He dearly hoped this chapter would never become canon, the poor devil.

"Ah, that explains a lot of things, I suppose," Mikan calmly said.

"I'm surprised," Negi said, with a voice that despite everything didn't sound terribly surprised. "You've taken it remarkably well. Most people ask me for a love potion or a money tree."

"Well, it's one of those things that get chipped away little by little, you know?" Mikan shrugged. "First your brother somehow got a girlfriend without paying her. Then a girl with a tail shows up and says she's your brother's alien fiancee, then your brother shows up with a watering can that only could be magical, then the new girl in your class claims to be Alice in Wonderland, then Gandalf shows up and says he's going to train your brother so he'll be a Jedi. So now I just take them as they come. Don't blame yourself, ultimately it's just Lala-san's fault. Although in hindsight, the first thing that broke normalcy was Rito finding a girlfriend. On second thought, better blame Rito and Haruna-san."

"Hey!" her brother protested.

"Yes," Yen Sid approved, finishing his exam by patting Alice's shoulders. "The Light shines brightly in her heart. She is one of the twelve Princesses with pure hearts. As long as we have her, the plans of the enemy cannot be fulfilled… but should the rest of them fall in their clutches, the threat will still be present. Should they gather the eleven, r even just unite the seven, they will amass enough power to come for her and reach their endgame."

"Okay, and who are 'they'?" Madoka quite sensibly asked.

"The exact nature of the hand guiding the Heartless is unknown to me yet," Yen Sid said, "although I have several theories. None that can help you yet, however, as those names would mean nothing to you. One way or another, your goal is clear. With Traverse Town lost as a base of operations, you must find the Princesses and bring them here, for their own safety."

"Are you suggesting we go and kidnap girls from their homes, families and loved ones, then to bring them here, into another world, where they won't know anyone, for God knows how long?!" Negi gasped. "Sir, I'm shocked and disgusted! There must be another way!"

"You just did that with Alice-chan," Sakurako pointed out.

"Only because I don't know yet how to return her to her proper place and time!" her teacher said. "I'll do that as soon as I can! In the meanwhile, what else could I do, leave her with the Queen of Hearts?"

"I'm sure my mother will say a woman's proper place is with her future husband, so…" Alice shyly said with a small blush, looking down at her dainty feet.

"I understand your reservations," Yen Sid told Negi, "and while your assistance in retrieving the first Princess is duly noted and thanked, perhaps the task should be left to the Keyblade wielder from here on."

"Are you joking?!" Chamo, Negi and Mikan said all at once, even if because of completely different reasons.

"You can't ask Rito to run that kind of risks!" Mikan said.

"Why, yes, she's right!" Negi agreed. "But also, my father could be in one of those parallel worlds! Undertaking that search is my duty as a teacher _and_ a son!"

"If those Princesses are so important, they all should be making Pactios with my brother Negi!" Chamo said.

"Actually, getting them Pactios is a sound enough idea," a voice said from the doorstep, and they looked that way to see Skuld standing there, lazily resting against the doorframe, her arms folded and her mallet tucked behind her back. "I've observed… patterns of repeating events of this nature unfolding in the past. Invariably, the Chosen Ones would get captured because they lacked enough skills for self defense while the heroes stumbled around like dumb hotheaded Shounen manga parties." She shrugged callously. "The way I see it, there's some merit to the idea of letting them help with their own defense instead of, I don't know, blindly trusting thirteen emotionally conflicted pretty boys and the random talking mouse and cute girl to pull all the weight of their protection."

Yen Sid narrowed his cold gray eyes at her. "Woman. What are you?"

"Don't call her a 'what', please," Negi frowned. "She's my student, and as such, to be treated with due respect."

"She's also a goddess," Sakurako added.

"Yes, she is that, too," Negi nodded, as if addressing an afterthought.

"A goddess," Mikan evenly said, since all of her talk of taking things as they came had not been pure bluster. "Sure, why not."

"She was there with Miss Asuna when the Professor rescued me!" Alice further explained.

"Skuld, Norn of the Future," Skuld bowed graciously, yet also with some taunting mischief, to the old magician. "A pleasure! So, as I was saying, while giving them Pactios is not a bad idea, having all of those Pactios to be connected to a single Magister Magi is. Should something happen to the Magister of the twelve, all the effort put into equipping them would be instantly lost. It's better to diversify and assign different Magistra for them."

"Wow, are you that eager to kiss another girl already?" Misa asked her. "You can always just smooch Makie again, you know."

"Shut up, I wasn't saying I'd have to be one of the Magistra!" Skuld comically bared her teeth at her.

"How did you know you'd have to come here to join this conversation in the first place?" Rito asked. "Exactly who called you? I don't remember doing it. You don't have my house bugged, do you?"

"I have every strategically important site in this campus bugged, isn't that just logical?" Skuld shamelessly admitted with a big smile and an aloof shrug, while Lala just nodded sagely, rubbing her own chin and moving her tail around. "And it's not really any less ethical than peeking into a friend's dreams while she was sleeping innocently, is it? But just so you know I hold no grudges, I'll lend you an important asset for this enterprise!"

She clapped twice and in walked, after her, Banpei's small, stiffly moving figure, making Yen Sid to lift an eyebrow. Producing funny clicking and whirring sounds with each step, Banpei eventually stopped before Rito and bowed to him, without saying a word.

"Banpei-kun might not look like much," Skuld haughtily said, looking at her fingernails and proudly making slight 'Fu, fu, fu' sounds in between words, "but he's been programmed with numerous programs and subprograms of runic magic, including demonic dispelling, barrier setting, perimeter search, ballistic strike, ground-air-bombardment, and even a function to trace Alliance circles far faster and more accurately than any old familiar," this was said with a smug look at the fuming Chamo. "About the only thing it can't do to support the tasks of Princess-hunting is supplying the means of transport, but I assume Master Sid has that covered already, or am I wrong?"

Yen Sid kept on warily looking at this strange young woman who still made his skin crawl quietly, and finally said, "As a matter of fact, yes, I have."

* * *

"Here it is," Yen Sid said after leading them into the large empty lot near Rito's house with the sign announcing an upcoming Lexmart. Negi observed it was the same lot where Chachamaru kept her stray kittens, and that said kittens had been moved to a corner, where a sign with Chachamaru's unmistakable handwriting hung on the fence, right above the kittens' cardboard box home. It read:

 _Do Not Disturb, Even in Case of Liftoff or Landing, On Pain of Unfortunate Consequences. -Karakuri Chachamaru_

As Negi sweatdropped, Rito asked, "Are we going to travel into another worlds... through thin air?"

Yen Sid merely extended a fist ahead and knocked on said thin air, causing a curious metallic sound, almost as if his knuckles were hitting something solid. A moment later, a tiny head with blue eyes, large ears, and long golden hair peeked out a small door that had just opened itself in midair, sporting a very unamused expression as the kittens tensed in attention, meowing and licking their whiskers.

"You really need to find me a better place to stay," Gadget Hackwrench dryly warned the old mage.

"Ah! Gadget-san!" Negi recognized her, smiling widely.

"Who?" Madoka blinked, perplexed as Hel— Hades, we guess.

"Oh, hello, Professor, Miss Misa, Miss Sakurako, Miss Alice, and um... everybody else," Gadget threw a token greeting nod their way, too. "It's good to see you're okay. At least, I'm assuming those are you and not alternate dimension versions of you. That'd be okay too, I guess, but I'd really rather be dealing with the versions I met. Usually that feels far more comfortable."

"After the— after what happened," Yen Sid began explaining, yet clearly unable to explain what had happened between Point B and the current Point D, "I managed to contact Miss Gadget and we retrieved Donald and Goofy's Gummi Ship from..." Here he also was unable to explain this part properly, so he ended up just leaping over it as best as he could, which was not that much, but at least he achieved it stoically enough. "However, since Rito's homeworld apparently hasn't mastered commercially available interstellar travel yet, not even through pirate sail ships, I took the precaution of casting a spell on it to make it invisible to the local naked eye or the native detection devices. The latter is hardly my specialty, but I counted with Miss Gadget's assistance on the subject..."

"Don't worry, the spell will react so you can see it whenever you need to," Gadget nodded, patting a hand on a side of the invisible ship, then caressing it with a fond sigh. "I only wish we could have brought the far more advanced ship of King Mickey instead, but apparently it couldn't be savaged from... um... where did you say it was, Master Sid?"

"Still crashed at Symphony of Sorcery, that much I can remember, Miss Gadget," Yen Sid humorlessly replied. "Still full of copulating Fairies, unfortunately."

Lala laughed, a hand behind her head. "Sorry! I'm not that good at landings, Zastin usually piloted for me!"

"I have noticed," Yen Sid said. "And so Miss Gadget will be transporting you during your search. I trust you will repay her help by making sure her stay at this realm is a pleasant one."

"In other words, please take me away from the cats," Gadget summed up. "The last few hours have been a constant sage! And the gynoid refused to take them away! I thought we were better friends than that by now!"

Negi blinked. "Okay. Hm, I'm sure Satomi-san won't mind offering you a place at her laboratory...?"

Gadget nodded. "A laboratory will be the best place, yes. Thank you!"

"Out of all the things I never expected for a mouse to say!" Sakurako whistled.

"I never expected a mouse to say anything, period!" Madoka gasped. "And what kind of a name is 'Hackwrench'?"

Yen Sid and Gadget gave her a disapproving look. "Oh, right, I've forgotten how casually namist everyone from this dimension tends to be,"

"Namist? Is that even a thing?" Madoka said.

"... all right," Mikan finally said, in a very little and faraway voice. "So, this genius pilot mouse lady will be taking you on trips to other planets in a ship that will be invisible as long as it's on Earth, so you can find princesses to kiss to protect them from the nebulously defined forces of evil."

"Basically, yes, that's it," Yen Sid nodded. "My congratulations, not only you are perceptive, but have quite a cultivated vocabulary for a child your age."

"Thank you," Mikan blandly said. She looked at Negi, "Sensei, remember what I told you about taking these things in stride? Well, it seems there is a limit for that capacity of mine after all."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Mikan-san," Negi honestly said. "I could wipe your memories if you—"

Mikan held a hand up quietly. "I'm sure I'd re-learn the very same things the very next day, so let's just do this instead. I'm going to pretend I never saw or learned any of this, so I don't have to start screaming in confused horror about the true nature of the world and the hopeless nightmares it hides."

Negi nodded. "We'd appreciate that, Mikan-san. All in all, it's probably the best thing you can do."

"Thank you. I only wish you could do the same," she sincerely said, then began bowing for the others. "Good afternoon to all. Rito, Lala-san, I'll have dinner ready for you. Alice-chan, see you tomorrow."

Yen Sid nodded at her as she silently walked down the street, then told Rito, "You have a truly remarkable sister. I'm glad she doesn't seem to remember anything from when the world perished in hideous agony around her, no doubt crushing her in boundless darkness."

"Ummm... thank you?" a very pale Rito said.

"She... She isn't mad at me because I am one of the abnormal things myself, is she...?" Alice worried.

Misa cooed and hugged her, ruffling her hair. "Of course she isn't, Alice-chan dear... She's just using a wonderful invention of the modern times we call coping sarcasm!"

"I happen to know what 'sarcasm' means, thank you very much!"

* * *

 **To be Continued?**


End file.
